


Maja Dracónica

by zvi



Category: White Collar
Genre: Character of Color, Community: Month of June, F/M, Female Protagonist
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-18
Updated: 2010-06-18
Packaged: 2017-10-10 04:19:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/95402
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zvi/pseuds/zvi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>June has hidden depths.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Neal

**Author's Note:**

  * For [livrelibre](https://archiveofourown.org/users/livrelibre/gifts).



> [Livrelibre made the request I liked the best](http://zvi.dreamwidth.org/620337.html).

"She's in the basement, going through some of his things," says Sara.

Neal smiles at her, the clever little boy grin that makes older women want to feed him.

Sara punches down her dough, the hard smack a comment in itself, and Neal sighs, says, "Thank you, Sara." If she were really indifferent to him, he'd leave Sara alone, but she still thinks he's trouble. He won't leave an enemy at his back if he can help it, and he doesn't dare try to get her fired. He may have lived here for three years, but Sara's been around for fifteen. He's still trying to to find out what she wants, and how to give it to her.

He heads down to the second basement, the one he's never actually been inside. No one told him to keep out, but there's no need. He usually knows that's where June's headed by the way she avoids his touch and stiffens in his presence, the way she starts to say things and then stops. He knows that Kate's death still hits him sometimes, a squeeze on his heart if he sees Elizabeth in dim light or if June says his name like that in the dark. He's not surprised that Byron's death still affects June.

On the other hand, he's been working on painting her as [the Maja](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_maja_desnuda) for about six weeks. It's not finished today, but he's ready for her to look at it. So he'll knock, and let her know to come find him when she's ready, and go work on his sketches for the clothed version. That's his plan, anyway.

But when he knocks at the door, June's reply is an inarticulate rasp, somewhere between a growl and a hacking cough. The sound scares him, she got pneumonia this winter, not bad, but…. He opens the door.


	2. June

June is napping, drifting among her treasures, tangible memories of times gone by. She's safe in the sub-basement, relaxed and out of her skin as she is nowhere else. The knock at the door doesn't alarm her, doesn't really wake her. She just grumbles wordlessly, wanting the noise to go away, to leave her to her peace.

She feels the draft when the door opens. She cracks open one eye. Neal stands before her, mouth open, a perfect pantomime of disbelief. "Oh dear," she says.

His eyes move, gaze running around the room's periphery, then along her sides. "June?" he says, calmly, cautiously. It's not clear if he's asking who, what, or where.

She's as small as she can be in this form, back legs curled underneath her body and blue-grey wings wrapped around her torso. She extends her head and neck, and speaks as softly as a twenty-foot saurian can manage. "I like to be alone down here."

"I can understand why," he says, and his eyes travel the length of her body. "I'll leave you to—."

"I've napped long enough, actually," she says. She puts words to action and takes her human form. Her ears pop from the vacuum she creates by removing her bulk from the room, and there's the faintest touch of vertigo from the sudden change of perspective. She stretches, arms above her head and then a lunge to each side. There's something about taking dragon form which eases the human joints. She's gratified to realize that Neal's eyes are following the length of her legs, and there's still the glint of appreciation, of satisfaction, in his eyes. "Hand me that shift," she says pointing behind him. It's hardly a shift, more like a caftan, and she pulls the red silk over her head after he hands it to her.

They walk up the stairs, arm in arm. She keeps meaning to get some sort of texture applied to the stairs, as she always walks up and down them barefoot, but it never occurs to her when she's above ground, and the banister is solid and steady. "You can keep a secret," she says. "Are you going to?"

"You're not dangerous," he says thoughtfully. "The closest thing that I've ever heard, the closest thing that seemed possible, is alligators in the sewer, so you're discreet. And if I told anyone, they'd lock me up." His hand tightens on her arm, just a moment. "It's not as if I know how to force you to change, even if I did see some benefit to telling the rest of the world."

"I'm pleased that you're being so sensible about this," she says.


	3. Neal

Neal laughs, abruptly, and the sound is just a little bit cracked. "I'm having hysterics on the inside. The woman I'm…living with, if I may be so bold, appears to be a…dragon. Or at least, that's what I think I saw."

She pats his hand, and her fingers are warm. She's always been a little bit warm. He assumed it was just fat, or menopause, or the natural variation of the human species. He wonders what else he's deduced that is so fundamentally wrong. Or maybe it is just fat, maybe she doesn't breathe fire. Clearly, he knows much less about the world and about his place in it than he thought. "Are your children…like you?" he asks. He hasn't met any children, just granddaughters Cindy and Samantha. Could that adorable little girl be blue and shiny, like June?

"April is. May and Harolde aren't. Manfred would have been, if he'd hatched."

Neal trips on air. How could she say hatched, as casually as she had said, "Should I buy two tickets to La Traviatta for Saturday?" when he got out of bed this morning?

"April was hatched from an egg. I carried May and Harolde as a human."

"Ah," he says, because he can keep from saying, "That's nice," but he cannot think of an appropriate commentary, a suave or interesting or intelligent thing to say. Because his fundamental understanding of the world is altered. "What else is there?" he asks.

"I don't know," says June, after a heartbeat. "I met a vampire, once, and a djinn. Magic only works for some people, and it's very hard to do, for someone fully human." She cocks her head to one side. "I wouldn't rely on it for anything that could be accomplished by slight of hand, only for the truly impossible."

Neal blinks and says nothing, because he hadn't gotten that far in his thinking. They take the stairs between the first basement and the ground floor in silence. At the top of the stairs, she says, "Come with me a little farther, please." She's clearly not asking, and the grip she's got on his forearm is strong.

"Are you stronger than you appear, as a human?" he asks, setting his feet just a little. He'd been working, all the way up the stairs, on how to ask if she was old, if this was her true form, if June de Winter was a real person. If he knew her at all. If he was sleeping with a woman who sometimes looked like a dragon, or a dragon who sometimes looked like a woman.

"No," she says. "But you probably underestimate the strength of old ladies." She gives a little hug to his arm, telegraphing the taunt.

He remembers abruptly, why he went down there in the first place. "The naked Maja," he begins, and then falls silent. He tries again, even though he knows the joke is still unformed, incomplete. "I could paint a three-part Maja: vestida, desnuda, and dracónica."


	4. June

June laughs, and bats at his arm for foolishness, and pulls him along up the stairs. "I need to show you something else," she says. She takes him into her rooms, drops him off in the sitting room, and pulls the box from her dresser. Her hand aches a little; there's a sucking sensation from the inside.

Back in her sitting room, Neal is perched on a restored Oneida chair, hands flat on his knees, eyes following her every move. He looks thoughtful, not shocky or wary, which is good.

She sits in the rope wingchair next to him and puts the box in his lap. The emptiness in her heart eases just a bit. She's not sure if it's the distance between herself and its contents, or if it's because Neal is the right man for what she needs.

He picks up the box and examines it, a wooden jewelry box inlaid with enamel, a woman and a dragon, chasing each other around its edges. She had commissioned it for Byron, soon after they met. "Should I open it?" Neal asks.

She nods at him. "I want to give you what's inside," she says.

He puts the box back in his lap, pulls his fingers away from it. "What's inside?"

She forces a chuckle, but she's apprehensive now. He is exactly what she wants, beautiful and brilliant and with exquisite taste, a lover and a dancer and so very much like Byron. She takes the box from his lap and opens it.

On the velvet bed lies a heavy gold ring, a man's wedding ring, it looks like now.

"Are you asking me to marry you?" asks Neal, voice breaking high and sharp at the end of the sentence.

She shrugs. "I'm asking you to fill the empty places in my soul," and her voice is flat and dry. He didn't have to make it sound like marrying her was quite that unthinkable.

He says, "I'm pretty sure that's not a metaphor, but I also don't know what that means. Do I," he shrugs minutely with his shoulders, "do I have any frame of reference for that, outside of bad poetry?"

"No," she says. She puts a hand on his shoulder. "Take the ring, anyway."

He leans forward and kisses her, deep and breathtaking and focused, the way he normally is in bed. When he pulls back, she's breathless and panting, and he rubs a finger over her lower lip. "I'd just about decided that you didn't want anything from me. And now you want a lifetime?"

It's a question, so she answers with a nod.

"Ask me again later," he says, and stands, puts the box on the chair behind him. "Come look at your Goya homage now." His face is cheerful and warm and a lie. It's his version of a blank face.

She takes the hand he offers, and wraps her arm around his forearm. She tries to take comfort from the fact that he has not once pulled away from her, that he has not said no, but it's hard. She wants this so much. She leans into him as they walk.

He says, "Tell me about dragons." She opens her mouth to do so, but he cuts her off. "No, first, tell me about Byron. And you, June. Tell me about the two of you together."

"All of it, this time," she promises.


End file.
